Reviews
Motorola Mobility, now a division of Google, has been on a tear as of late, releasing potent new Android superphones to the market, in competition with the iPhone 5, Samsung's Galaxy SIII and many others. Not long ago we gave you a look at the recently released RAZR M, the 4-inch little brother to the hot, new device that...
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Smartphones, tablets and computers are constantly consuming and creating more and more content. And with that comes massive amounts of data consumption. The amount of sharing that takes place on today's smartphones and tablets is astounding, and every instance of that requires data -- and storage. Lately, it seems as if companies are...
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When considering a new storage solution, most users try to find the right balance between speed and capacity. SSDs are super fast, no doubt about it, but an HDD spinning at 7200RPM or 10,000RPM will still offer solid performance, and you have access to dramatically more storage capacity for a far lower cost per GB compared to...
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We've often spoken about the future of SSD technology eventually evolving away from "bridged" interfaces like SATA and SAS, to direct-attached, native interfaces like PCI Express. It just makes sense. With the ultra-fast random access times and high IO bandwidth of solid state storage, it's not the storage media itself that's...
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Given all the frenzy around ultrabooks, Microsoft's Surface, and the low power potential of future chips like Haswell, you might think that desktop replacement-class laptops had fallen out of favor with modern laptop manufacturers. iBuyPower's CZ-17 "Valkyrie" is proof that they haven't -- and while its size and weight won't appeal to road...
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It seems like ages ago that the world first heard the now-unmistakable "DROID" sound-byte. DROID was originally billed as the anti-iPhone, pointing things out that Apple's iOS platform couldn't do, but proclaiming proudly that "DROID does". The campaign seems to have worked. To date, the brand has taken off, proving to be a...
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NVIDIA has been on a tear as of late, releasing a constant stream of GPUs over the last few weeks. In mid-August, the GPU giant released the GeForce GTX 660 Ti and less than a month later, followed up with the GeForce GTX 660 and GeForce GTX 650. Here we are now, less than a month since that release and NVIDIA is at the ready again with...
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Apple upped the ante in the tablet market with its Retina display found in the third-generation iPad, which offers a resolution of 2048x1536. Since then, some Android tablet manufacturers have followed suit by increasing screen resolution and providing a better display overall. Acer's latest Iconia Tab A700 is one such tablet that aims...
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Late last week, we posted a glimpse of what AMD had in store with their latest A-Series APUs for desktop systems. In that article, we were able to officially unveil the Virgo platform and discuss speeds and feeds, GPU performance, and power consumption characteristics. However, we weren’t able to disclose any CPU performance...
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So here it is, the mid-2012 refresh of Apple's trend setting MacBook Air line. It's been four long years since Apple first introduced the MacBook Air to the world, which at the time was almost considered a luxury item, with a comparatively steep price tag versus other ultralight machines. That changed a couple of years later, and in the process...
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We’ll be taking a somewhat different two-tiered approach with our coverage of AMD’s new Trinity-based APUs for desktop systems today. AMD is lifting the veil on their new product line-up, in addition to graphics performance and power consumption, but we can’t quite give you the full monty just yet, due to a new multi-tiered...
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For all the performance being packed into today’s super-slim ultrabooks, gaming and multimedia are often the weakest links. Most ultrabooks have Intel integrated graphics that aren’t designed to take on graphics-intensive games. Storage space, graphics processing, and display quality can be key areas in many ultrabooks that leave...
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While we were testing the WD My Book VelociRaptor Duo, a funny thing happened. At one point, we reflected on our first external hard drive--a 40GB unit salvaged from a laptop--and remarked at how quaint it seems in comparison to WD's powerful, spacious storage beast. Indeed, external storage has come a long way in a relatively short...
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The iPhone 5 is available, but only for those who pre-ordered right away on September 14th and were willing to stand in line at an Apple Store or pay big bucks on an auction site. For the second year in a row, Apple decided to unveil a new iPhone in the run-up to the fourth quarter, instead of in June at WWDC. Last Q4, Apple saw record...
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Apple's iOS 6 is now available to download, and Apple has been quick to tout some "200 new features" over iOS 5. But of those 200, only a select few are noticeable to the end user. While a ton of stuff has been tweaked under the hood to enhance or otherwise modify the OS, not all of it is apparent to the end user. There are...
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If you are a fan of phones with physical keyboards you don't have a lot of choice these days. Generally you're going to have to choose between a Blackberry and a handful of Android phones, as most companies are focusing their attention on bigger and thinner devices. The Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE has the rare mix of a decent physical keyboard...
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It takes serious guts to try and remake Half-Life. Valve's 1998 first-person shooter didn't change FPS gaming, it redefined it. Before Half-Life, blockbusters like Quake and Quake II were lone gunman affairs with little to no interaction with non-hostile NPCs (Non-Player Character). Half-Life took that entire model, and blew it apart. The...
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Intel's next-generation CPU, codenamed Haswell, was the major star of IDF. One aspect of the chip we haven't talked about at length, however, is its emphasis on reduced power consumption. When Intel announced that its Ivy Bridge mobile products would target 17W for mainstream systems, it made headlines. Pushing Haswell down to 10W is an even...
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Last winter, Intel made waves by demonstrating a number of cutting-edge technologies it believed could drive the next-generation of lower power devices. In addition to its pioneering work with Near Threshold Voltages, the company showed off Rosepoint -- a prototype SoC that combined a dual-core 32nm Atom with an all-digital radio. As we covered...
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In the past few months, we have taken a look at no less than four new high-end GPUs from NVIDIA based on the company’s Kepler microarchitecture. NVIDIA kicked things off with the GeForce GTX 680 back in May and followed up a few weeks later with the monstrous, dual-GPU powered GeForce GTX 690, which remains the fastest graphics...
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Intel's Dadi Perlmutter took to the stage in the opening keynote of Intel Developer's Forum 2012 to greet an enthusiastic crowd and evangelize the company's vision of what they call the rise of "natural, intuitive computing." On stage with Dadi were a number of Intel-powered devices including a myriad of Windows 8 tablets and new Ultrabooks...
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Intel’s Dadi (David) Perlmutter, General Manager Intel Architecture Group and Chief Product Officer, opened up the 2012 Intel Developers Forum by reflecting back on the significance of this day, the eleventh anniversary of the attacks on 9/11. Today, however, also marks the fifteenth anniversary of IDF, so Dadi ultimately moved on to...
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